Sherwani Asma Farhat, Mohmood Sameena, Khan Fauzia, Khan Rizwan Hasan, Azfer Md Asim
Department of Zoology, AMU, 202 002 Aligarh, India.
Indian J Clin Biochem. 2003 Jul;18(2):169-80. doi: 10.1007/BF02867384.
Lectins, a group of specific glycoproteins present in animal as well as plant cells, are used as differentiating markers to study cancers and metastatic cell lines. This property of lectins depends on the process of cellular glycosylation. Glycosylation of some of the extracellular membrane proteins and lipids maintains the cell/cell and cell/matrix interactions. Chemical alterations in glycosylation play an important role in the metastatic behavior of tumor cells. Carbohydrate residues of the membrane glycoproteins can be detected using lectins due to their binding specificity to carbohydrates. Lectins, therefore have gained an importance in the field of cancer research. Galectins, a specialized group of lectin like proteins that are Ca+ independent and galactoside binding, are also considered as differentiation markers in some specific cancers like the carcinomas of thyroid.Thus the use of lectins and galectins to identify specific carbohydrates present on cell surface help in invasion and metastasis processes.
凝集素是一类存在于动物和植物细胞中的特定糖蛋白，被用作研究癌症和转移细胞系的鉴别标志物。凝集素的这一特性取决于细胞糖基化过程。一些细胞外膜蛋白和脂质的糖基化维持着细胞/细胞以及细胞/基质间的相互作用。糖基化的化学改变在肿瘤细胞的转移行为中起重要作用。由于凝集素对碳水化合物具有结合特异性，因此可以用其检测膜糖蛋白的碳水化合物残基。因此，凝集素在癌症研究领域变得越来越重要。半乳糖凝集素是一类特殊的凝集素样蛋白，不依赖Ca+且具有半乳糖苷结合能力，在某些特定癌症如甲状腺癌中也被视为分化标志物。因此，利用凝集素和半乳糖凝集素来识别细胞表面存在的特定碳水化合物有助于侵袭和转移过程。
